Rise of the Governor by Robert Kirkman Page B

after getting his emotions in check. “Do you know what a code word is?”
    Penny looks at him. “Like a secret code?”
    â€œExactly.” Brian licks his finger, and then wipes a stain of dirt from her cheek. “You and I are going to have this secret code word.”
    â€œOkay.”
    â€œThis is a very special code. Okay? From now on, whenever I say this secret word, I want you to do something for me. Can you do that? Can you, like, always remember to do something for me whenever I give you the secret code word?”
    â€œSure … I guess.”
    â€œWhenever I say the code word, I want you to hide your eyes.”
    â€œHide my eyes?”
    â€œYeah. And cover your ears. Until I tell you it’s okay to look. All right? And there’s one more thing.”
    â€œOkay.”
    â€œWhenever I give you the secret code … I want you to remember something.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œI want you to remember that there’s gonna come a day when you won’t have to hide your eyes anymore. There’s gonna come a day when everything’s all better, and there won’t be any more sick people. Got that?”
    She nods. “Got it.”
    â€œNow what’s the word gonna be?”
    â€œYou want me to pick it?”
    â€œYou bet … it’s your secret code … you should pick it.”
    The little girl wrinkles up her nose as she ponders a suitable word. The sight of her contemplating—so intently that she looks as though she’s calculating the Pythagorean theorem—presses down on Brian’s heart.
    Finally the child looks up at Brian, and for the first time since the plague had begun, a glimmer of hope kindles in her enormous eyes. “I got it.” She whispers the word to her stuffed animal, then looks up. “Penguin likes it.”
    â€œGreat … don’t keep me in suspense.”
    â€œAway,” she says. “The secret code word’s gonna be away .”
    *   *   *
    The gray dawn comes in stages. First, an eerie calm settles around the interstate, the wind dying in the trees, and then a luminous pale glow around the edges of the forest wakes everybody up and gets them going.
    The sense of urgency is almost immediate. They feel naked and exposed without their vehicle, so everybody concentrates on the task at hand: packing up, getting back to the Suburban, and getting the damn thing unstuck.
    They make the quarter-mile hike back to the SUV in fifteen minutes, carrying their bedrolls and excess food in backpacks. They encounter a single zombie on the way, a wandering teenage girl, and Philip easily puts out her lights by quickly and quietly chopping a furrow into her skull, while Brian whispers the secret word to Penny.
    When they reach the Suburban, they work in silence, ever mindful of the shadows of adjacent woods. First they try to apply weight to the rear end by putting Nick and Philip on the tailgate, and having Brian give it gas from the driver’s seat, pushing with one leg outside the door. It doesn’t work. Then they search the immediate area for something to build traction under the wheels. It takes them an hour but they eventually unearth a couple of broken pallets scattered along a drainage ditch, and they bring them back, and wedge them under the wheels.
    This also fails.
    Somehow the mud beneath the SUV is so saturated with moisture and runoff and oil and God knows what else that it just keeps sucking the vehicle deeper, the leaning Suburban slipping progressively backward down the slope. But they refuse to give up. Driven by a relentless anxiety over unexplained noises in the adjacent pine forest—twigs snapping, low concussive booms in the distance—as well as the constant unspoken dread of having all their worldly possessions and supplies lost with the foundering Suburban, nobody is willing to face the encroaching hopelessness of the situation.
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